March 17, 2010

In the past week, a man in Orting, Wash., near Tacoma, died after he reportedly was beaten while confronting people trying to steal marijuana plants from his property. On Monday, a prominent medical-marijuana activist shot an armed man who is accused of breaking into his home in a suburban area near Seattle where he grows and distributes marijuana plants....

In both cases... the victims appear to have been chosen because they were known to have relatively large amounts of marijuana in their homes....

12 comments:

They're farmers and that's a valuable crop, probably their very livelihood. I can imagine a modern western based on those farmers with a stoned John Wayne with his Winchester fighting to defend his fine skunky buds from the outlaws.

Imagine 1933 with the weird half-measures we have in place on marijuana now, but replace it with alcohol.

In the past week, a man in Orting, Wash., near Tacoma, died after he reportedly was beaten while confronting people trying to steal alcohol from his property. On Monday, a prominent alcohol activist shot an armed man who is accused of breaking into his home in a suburban area near Seattle where he distills and distributes alcohol....

In both cases... the victims appear to have been chosen because they were known to have relatively large amounts of alcohol in their homes....

As PoNyman's analogy alluded, I attribute this to the present twilight situation where marijuana is only half legalized (and only for those who have obtained a physicians' recommendation) while the black market distribution channels and violent gang involvement is still very much active. It is much like the Prohibition era in this regard, and thus has nothing to do with whether “stoners are totally nonviolent.” Actually, while many stoners are nonviolent, I suspect that a goodly number of others are not — based on the subculture they're associated with; I understand that Hell's Angels smoke quite a bit of weed, for instance. But, as I say, it really doesn't matter whether they are or not; the gangs and other violent types are intimately involved in the black market — because it's illegal, not as a result of any particular character of the drug.